Last year’s favorite company activity was paint night at Painting With A Twist, so we decided to repeat it. This time, instead of a lighthouse, we painted a gecko, and it was fun to see how the subject matter encouraged everyone to let their imaginations run wild.

Control systems are being installed with graphical interfaces to provide real-time control and monitoring. The Alcorn McBride ShowTouch provides such and interface for the V16 Pro and V4 Pro show controllers.

But with show systems today having 20, 30, or even more devices to control and monitor from a single location, the amount of information can become overwhelming. So here are some ideas on how to provide useful information and control based on the current state of your control system.

This year will mark a very special moment for Alcorn McBride, when on March 1st we celebrate our 30th anniversary, a remarkable accomplishment for any company, and especially for an American audio video manufacturer.

It’s fun to reflect on the tens of thousands of products we’ve produced in that time, and especially fun to take a peek at where it all started, in my spare room in 1986:

Our products (and our computers!) have changed a lot in 30 years (had Ethernet even been invented yet?) But one thing that hasn’t changed is our total dedication to product support. In fact, we still support products we made back then! I’m proud of the amazing staff that makes that possible, and excited to share this special year with them. Here’s to many more!

Using the A/V Binloop HD to feed high-quality content to any video wall.

Introduction

With the rapid expansion of flat-panel and LED wall technology, video walls are so ubiquitous that they have become a common part of modern architecture. They are often used to display content like video art, advertisements, promotional videos, and much more.

A typical video wall consists of multiple panels that must each be provided with their own video source. The tricky part is that those video sources must by synchronized with one another to form a coherent image across multiple panels. This is not something that can be achieved by your everyday set-top box or DVD/Blu-Ray player. It requires specialized A/V gear that is designed to provide multiple video outputs that are synchronous with one another. Read more...

One of the best things about Alcorn McBride is not our products. It’s our people. Sure lots of companies say they are good to their employees and that they are “family friendly” but at Alcorn McBride we’re a “friendly family.” Does this make a difference? You bet it does! Many of the Alcorn McBride Employees have 10+ years of tenure. We’ve watched each other’s kids grow, attended each other’s weddings, and celebrated in the births of many children. We hang out on weekends, go to lunch together, play pranks on each other (often!) and attend kids’ birthday parties.
Yeah, we argue sometimes too.

But we’re a family and with that brings a level of care for our company and our products unlike any other in the industry. And THAT’S the difference. Read more...

In an era when electronics have come to be regarded as expendable commodities that are replaced annually whenever the next version comes out, at Alcorn McBride we do things a bit differently. Our products are designed to last a really long time — as evidenced by our unprecedented five year warranty. But we often support them far beyond that time frame. It’s not unusual for us to see products that have been in service for more than twenty years. And our customers tend to become attached to them. So we’re always happy to upgrade them as long as we can.

Recently our support department received a unit that has been in use for more than twenty years — so long, in fact, that some of our staff had never seen that version of the front panel (and some of our team members were in diapers when it was released!). It was a V16/DMX, the predecessor to our DMX Machine lighting controller. The unit was returned to us because although it still worked, it rattled. It turned out a screw holding down the circuit had fallen out.

After replacing the screw, our engineer noted that the unit’s programmable devices were rated to store their programming for twenty years. He checked the manual, discovered they could be updated for another twenty years, and just to be on the safe side reprogrammed them with the newest code. That should get the box to 2034. Stay tuned to find out if we can still support it once everyone is driving flying cars.

Microsoft is celebrating 20 years on the world wide web by recreating its site from 1994.

While Microsoft.com was one of the first commercial sites on the web, Alcorn McBride wasn’t far behind. Here’s our web page from 1996. While a lot has changed, many other things haven’t. And unlike Microsoft, we still support all the products we were making in 1996!

We’re introducing a new feature for our controllers at InfoComm14 – location based control at your fingertips! By adding iBeacons, our ShowTouch for iOS app can detect where you are and automatically bring up predetermined screens when you approach the area.

Joy Burke, the Lead Engineer on the project, tells you how to make it happen.

What is an iBeacon?

iBeacon is an indoor low-powered proximity system that can notify nearby iOS 7 devices of its presence. While many different brands of iBeacons can be supported, we recommend using Estimote beacons for your application with our Touch screen. iBeacon technology only works on iPad 2+, and iPhone 4S+, and Bluetooth must be enabled for it to work. iBeacon functionality built into iOS uses the same “location services” feature as GPS – so the arrow will appear in the menu bar of your iPad or iPhone during use. You also may be prompted to enable location services. These services must be enabled for iBeacon apps to work correctly. Read more...

We believe in taking care of our customers and standing behind our products. Our standard two-year “no-questions-asked” warranty was already top notch. But we’ve decided that five is better than two.

Steve says it best:

“The Alcorn McBride brand is known for rock-solid reliability and unsurpassed customer support,” says CEO Steve Alcorn. “We’ve always had a two-year product warranty and the industry’s most customer-friendly support policies. Now we’ve decided to increase that to an unprecedented five-year product warranty.”

“Frankly, our existing customers have always known they can expect that level of support from us, so we’ve decided to make sure the rest of the world knows, too.”